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CIPLIT®, Center for Public Interest Law, Health Law Institute, IHRLI, & Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), get iTunes now.

Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines in the Developing World - Video

by Hosted by DePaul University College of Law
CIPLIT®, Center for Public Interest Law, Health Law Institute, IHRLI, & Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

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Description

In March 2007, in reaction to Thai health authorities' decision to use compulsory licenses to obtain low-cost generic medicines for HIV/AIDS, Abbott Laboratories, a Chicago-based multinational pharmaceutical company, decided to withdraw all applications to register drugs in Thailand and to not bring to market any new medicines in the country. This ban included the crucially important HIV/AIDS drug lopinavir/ritonavir, which is marketed as Kaletra.
The international humanitarian medical aid agency Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) condemned this action, citing the crisis in access to affordable HIV/AIDS medicines throughout the developing world and Thailand’s compliance with international trade law. Abbott argued that due process was not observed and that the use of such licenses undermines incentives for investments in medical research and development.
These developments occurred against a background of international debate on the role of patent rights in medical innovation and the impact on access to essential medicines in the developing world. Four DePaul University College of Law institutes and centers—the Health Law Institute, the Center for Intellectual Property Law & Information Technology, the Center for Public Interest Law and the International Human Rights Law Institute—will host a roundtable discussion, cosponsored by MSF, that focuses on the issue of access to essential medicines in the developing world. The discussion will feature a presentation from MSF addressing the impact of patent rights on public health from the perspective of doctors in the field and responses from a panel of experts representing pharmaceutical industry and legal perspectives.